


where men can't live gods fare no better

by blueprintofyourpast



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Road, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Feelings, Mild Sexual Content, Protective Michonne (Walking Dead), Protective Rick Grimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-22 21:08:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19991467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueprintofyourpast/pseuds/blueprintofyourpast
Summary: Turns out that eight months of forced co-parenting were enough for him to fall for her. Turns out that he isn’t surprised at all. The seed was planted before – long before the lights went out, long before he found himself digging a hole for Lori in the middle of the night, long before rapists and cannibals drummed them out of the city and left them fending for themselves on the road.“You’re scared”, she says softly, and he’s on the verge of bursting into tears because she’s right; she’s always right, “We don’t know if we made the right call until we get there.”“But we gotta try. For Carl.”“Yeah.”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .OR: In the midst of the apocalypse, love is an abstruse concept. Rick Grimes knows that, but it doesn't stop his heart from calling out for the woman right next to him.Loosely based on Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". (Richonne is endgame, though.)





	1. The Triad

**Author's Note:**

> hello.
> 
> i posted this fic on ff.net a while ago. it's angsty, yes, but not as bleak as the mccarthy novel. also: i'm a non-native writer. just know that i tried my best. 
> 
> feel free to leave a comment. or don't. i can't tell you what to do.

Mother Nature is a bitch. A loud, smelly, unforgiving bitch. It’s like she spent centuries waiting for the perfect moment to pounce and unleash herself on mankind’s chrome-coloured wonderland. Those industrial strongholds that fed on her and spat out black plumes of smog and poison in return. It’s like she suffered with purpose, like she was willing to bide her time before she slammed her fist down on a bright red button and came back to life with a vengeance.

Cities and motorways, power plants and even the tiniest villages. It all fell victim to her rage and then – after reeds and trees shot up like mushrooms in the suburbs, commercial zones, and business districts – she pulled the plug and grinned like a maniac.

There is nothing left except for drenched soil and planes of sludge. What once was green and undervalued has now turned to shit, and day by day, the rain makes room for mudslides and storm tides that rise and fall to wash away all the man-made brand marks that have been burned into Earth’s irritated skin.

So, yeah. Mother Nature is a bitch, but she’s free at last, mad and cruel in her reign and just as cold-hearted as the creatures that sought to keep her on her knees. And it’s not just _this_ country. Before the power supply collapsed, the news were keen to inform people around the world that it was time to go home and pray for salvation – but of course, not everyone is made for a quick death. Some folks just can’t help themselves it seems.

“Where’re we headed again?” his boy asks for the third time this evening with his legs dangling from the edge of a long wooden bench.

Rick’s too tired to give him an answer that doesn’t sound like a sick fairy tale. He’s too tired to talk at all these days. The woman right next to him, however, is always up for playing charades.

“Tybee Island”, she says and her voice is a gentle surge of hope that almost fractures his steadfast disenchantment, “Rumour has it that the people there have managed to build a safe zone. Sounds good, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Carl has his mother’s smile. Sometimes, it’s painful to watch his lips curl upwards and sometimes, the sight is oddly refreshing. Tonight, it’s neither. Tonight, it’s probably just a knee-jerk reaction to post-apocalyptic grapevine. Rumour has it. In an effort not to roll his eyes like the cynic he is, Rick takes another bite of his piece of roasted Doberman.

They were lucky when they found the dog on their way to Jonesboro. Its left hind leg was stuck in a bear trap, probably laid out by some starved-out sadist. At first, Carl winced at the high-pitched howls and suggested to nurse it back to health, but in the end, Rick pulled out his hunting knife and put the poor thing out of its misery.

With raindrops drumming against the roof of the abandoned railway station they chose as their refuge for tonight, they continue to eat in silence while the bonfire at their feet dissolves into a faint, flickering flame. Outside, the crunching sound of a tree trunk self-destructing and falling apart rings throughout the darkness like a crash of rusty cymbals. The waiting hall is cluttered with trash and cobwebs, and it smells like death in here.

In the past, making camp under the open sky proved to be a challenge since Carl tends to talk in his sleep and is thus prone to attract monsters, so they douse the fire and bar the doors with all kinds of dusty furniture. They play a tough round of rock, paper, scissors to determine who’s going to take watch first. Fortunately, the woman right next to him isn’t a sore loser. With the sword she found in an antique shop in Jellico propped up against her leg, she’s ready to sit in the gloom and listen to the wind whip against the wafer-thin walls. Or to the tell-tale clamour of uninvited guests stomping through the lobby.

Yeah. It’s the people – the ones that are delirious with hunger and fear as well as the ones that use the end of the world as a means to justify their blood lust – who have become the biggest threat to what is left of the human race. Rick had to learn that the hard way back home in Cynthiana where most of his neighbours started killing each other over a bottle of water or a pack of raisins once the local government ran out of supplies and declared a state of emergency. They all left or died at some point. Except for her. Except for his friend. Except for the woman right next to him.

“Got you something”, she says to his son as she bends down to rummage through her backpack, “Found it up in Cartersville.”

He meets Carl’s questioning gaze with a shrug and has to clench his jaw to prevent himself from smiling when she comes up with a dark red can of Coke. He remembers that day. They were tearing through the skeleton of a Target store in search for food and maybe some ammo. She was two aisles away from him and her gasp launched him into a state of mild panic, so he dropped his box of oatmeal, hurried towards her, and let out an amused snort when she revealed her lucky find and made him promise to keep it a secret.

“You saved that for me?”

“Yup.”

“Wow!” Carl beams as he lifts the tab in one swift motion; his grin grows wider by the second and there’s a familiar tangle of silent glee and utter gratitude that unfurls deep down in Rick’s belly, “Thank you, Michonne!”

Roughly a year ago, Carl came down with a cold. Rick was sure that he’d have to pick up his shovel again, but for some reason, she appeared on his doorstep and gave him some of the cough syrup she was stockpiling in her garage, effectively saving the boy’s life. He returned the favour two months later when he offered her his guest room after a gang of vagabonds broke into her house, urinated on her bed, and took all her belongings while she was out looking for batteries.

Ever since then it’s been the three of them raising nearby stores, keeping watch, and defending his house against hailstorms and hoodlums. He taught her how to shoot while she, a former emergency physician, showed him how to clean and stitch up a wound in under five minutes. At the same time, she became some sort of substitute mother to his son.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

The mix of sadness and worry in her tone snaps him out of his thoughts and the nails in his chest draw closer to his heart when he turns his head and catches the hitch in Carl’s breath. It takes him less than a second to get to the bottom of it, to see _why_ the boy’s cheeks are suddenly wet with tears, and he’s horrified. He’s so fucking tired. He doesn’t want to deal with this right now.

“I almost forgot what it tastes like”, Carl sniffles, his pale fingers wrapped tightly around the can; he takes another sip and twists his face into a grimace that isn’t flogged by sorrow but by something strangely akin to elation.

“It’s all yours.”

“It’s really good.”

 _It’s probably stale_ , is what Rick wants to say, but the words are quick to bounce off his teeth. He took the role of the doom-monger when this whole thing started, always adamant about reminding Carl that this world isn’t made for children and that letting your guard down is just another euphemism for committing suicide. He did it because he felt like he had to. Because he’s always been kind of a pessimist – Lori liked to complain about that all the time – but right now he’s sick of it all and his eyes well up in a matter of seconds.

He doesn’t allow himself to cry, though. Instead he swallows around the weight in his throat and finds comfort in the sight of the two most important people in his life cuddled up together in a moment of peace.

He also takes the opportunity to look at her and revel in the gush of warmth that tickles his veins like sweet electricity. The tingle in his fingertips reminds him of a simpler time, a hot Tuesday afternoon in late July when he got home from the station and watched her conduct a swarm of moving guys on the other side of the street. She put down the weeping fig she was carrying and introduced herself with a firm handshake and a small grin that would haunt him for weeks to come.  
Back in the day, he didn’t think too much about it. His wedding band couldn’t possibly stop him from admitting that there was a plethora of attractive women out there, and the mere act of appreciating the beauty of a friendly face didn’t make him a cheater. After all, he was somewhat happily married to the girl he’d gone to senior prom with.

There was, however, that one time when an argument drove Lori out of the house and back into her parents’ arms: for seven days, he loathed and savoured the silence that came with her absence. For seven days, he tried to come up with an explanation for Carl, who was on a one-week school trip in Louisville and had no idea that his mom and dad were once again at odds with each other. For seven days, he seethed and sulked and busied himself with work and reality TV. For seven days, he jerked off in the shower and every time he came, a snapshot of a pair of brown eyes – _her_ eyes, not Lori’s – cut through a stream of half-assed fantasies and caused him to tremble with bliss until guilt and shame came crashing down on him like a bucketful of acid.

As a result, he stopped talking to her for a while, which didn’t seem to faze her since they barely had the chance to talk much after their first encounter. When he felt like he was finally done serving his sentence, the world was already in shambles and his duty to protect his son and estranged wife quickly outranked his need for a chit-chat with a stunning woman, who had converted her home into a weather-sealed fortress.

He sighs.

Dwelling on a past that was obviously a lot less innocent than initially thought won’t get him anywhere, so he blinks and jumps right back into the present. Right back into the waiting hall that is now filled with Carl’s trademark snoring. He’s resting on the left side of the bench, his head nestled in her lap and the empty can crinkling in his grip.

“I told him to go to sleep”, she explains, and rubs the boy’s shoulder before she turns to Rick with the slightest frown, “You should, too.”

“Nah, I’m good.”

His voice betrays him and she quirks a brow. She knows him too well, patting her thigh and telling him where to rest his head. With a grunt, he lays down and fails to keep his pulse from speeding up and thumping in his ears.

Turns out that eight months of forced co-parenting were enough for him to fall for her. Turns out that he isn’t surprised at all. The seed was planted _before_ – long before the lights went out, long before he found himself digging a hole for Lori in the middle of the night, long before rapists and cannibals drummed them out of the city and left them fending for themselves on the road.

No, no. The seed was planted when he stood in his front yard, kicked at his lawnmower, and saw her walking down the street in a purple romper, bobbing her head to a song that was playing on her iPod and perfectly unaware of his helpless staring. It was planted when he ran into her at a crash site and realised that watching her save lives and bark orders at her subordinates turned him on like nothing else. It was planted when he caught her greeting the neighbour’s cat – a fat, mackerel tabby asshole that would take a dump on the hood of his car at least twice a week – with a formal bow.

“You’re scared”, she says softly, and he’s on the verge of bursting into tears because she’s right; she’s _always_ right, “We don’t know if we made the right call until we get there.”

“But we gotta try. For Carl.”

“Yeah.”

They talked about this before. They fought about it. He didn’t want to leave and she was desperate to give him a reality check. Desperate to tell him that soon, they’d be out of food and medicine. That soon, people would break down his door and take away everything he had left in this world. In the end, he crumbled under her gaze, wrapped his arms around her, and buried his face in her neck. Three days later, they packed their belongings and headed for Lexington where they spent the night in the stockroom of a vandalised drug store. There, surrounded by bare storage racks and clumps of dirt, she told him about a man she had met in med school – a man she’d once wanted to marry and have babies with – and he tried to kiss away the grief that shook her voice and dulled the colour of her eyes.

It was all teeth and tongue, hectic and sloppy and short-lived and _wonderful_. She broke away and brought her lips to his forehead. He shuddered then and held her close while his heart raged and roared in his ribcage even though he knew that their timing wasn’t right.

“You think they’re gonna throw us a welcoming party?” he asks dryly and joins her in her quiet laughter because maybe things _are_ going to change for the better once they made it to Tybee Island.  
“Go to sleep”, she says whilst playing with his hair.

He can feel Carl’s drowsy muttering waft against the back of his head. The wind keeps howling and somewhere in the distance, another tree goes down with a thundering creak. He reaches up to lace their fingers together and pulls her hand to his mouth and then to his chest. His eyelids flutter close. Everything is fucked up, but she’s with him – right here, right next to him – so he knows that it’s going to be okay.


	2. The Cattle

Starvation comes with a very distinct kind of pain. Rick submits to it every time he's about to fall asleep. It's not a quick stab or a sharp twinge but more of a constant pressure that makes it hard to think straight. It's almost like the sheer knowledge that he hasn't eaten for days, the knowledge that he's _empty_ , adds to the feeling that there's a gaping hole in his stomach. In a way, bouts of nausea and fatigue are just concomitant effects that roll by like a fleet of wispy clouds. The pain, on the other hand, is his whole world.

"We would never eat someone, right?" his boy asks as they wait in the kitchen at the end of the hallway.

The sink is filled with dirty pots, the plank floor carpeted with dark stains and boot prints, the window smeared and smudged with the echo of the violent storm that swept through the area last night. He saw the remains of the dining table scattered around the fireplace in the living room along with grubby sleeping bags, crumpled shreds of wallpaper, and a shopping cart full of shoes, shirts, and jackets.

He looks at the trapdoor to his feet. His insides are laced with barbed wire. If they're lucky, they're going to find some preserved fruit down there or maybe a can of beans. That's what people used to store in their basements, right? Food that takes its time before it goes bad.

"Dad?"

Starvation also makes you callous. He'll never forget what happened to Sam and Ana, an aspiring carpenter and a dentist's nurse. They used to live a few houses further down the street. They had a couple of peach trees in their backyard and liked to sell woodwork, pies, and some home-made jam at the local farmer's market. They were loved and highly respected until everything descended into chaos.

The screams kept him awake for days. He could've helped them, but he didn't – mostly out of fear that doing the right thing might earn him and his family a spot at the top of Cynthiana's inofficial death list. So, with his arms buckling and his stomach in knots, he carried the weight of his guilt instead and tried to forget about the empty jam jars in his cellar.

"Dad!"

"No", he says, wrenching his gaze from the floor, "No, we wouldn't."

"'Cause we're the good guys."

"Yeah."

"And we gotta carry the fire."

"Yeah."

Carl smiles at him, the bags under his eyes on full display. Rick's heart begins to crack. He never wanted this. He never wanted to see his son like that. He never wanted him to grow up in a world that's so eager to squeeze the life out of his body. _We gotta carry the fire_. What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?

The barbed wire tightens like a noose. He's torn between throwing up and groaning in pain. He'd give in to both urges if Carl weren't here with him asking questions he doesn't know how to answer without grasping at white lies because if it came to it, he'd slaughter a whole city to feed his boy.

"Didn't mean to keep you waiting. The barn was locked."

He finds her leaning against the doorway, kicking at a ball of dust with the toe of her boot. He's been counting down the seconds since she went to look for something they could use to unlock the door with. The pressure in his belly ebbs away when she hands him a long-handled spade.

"Thanks", he croaks, silently lamenting the loss of her warmth as her fingers wriggle out from under his palm, "Let's do this."

Frustration is one hell of a motivator, so stabbing around the padlock and prying the hatch open isn't that hard of a task as opposed to withstanding the need to gag when a horrible stench shoots up from below.

"Fucking hell."

"I don't wanna go down there", Carl whines, slapping his hands over his mouth and nose, "Please don't make me."

They don't. Taking a shallow breath and snatching a lighter from his back pocket, Rick makes his way down the hole while the woman right next to him unsheathes her sword and positions herself at the top of the staircase. Once his feet hit the lumpy floor, he turns around, squares his shoulders, and meets her pensive expression with a nod.

The flame casts a splash of shadows against the walls. The room is tiled with clay and stone. It's dark and dirty. It's not a pantry but a cell, a subterranean cowshed coated in blood and faeces.

"Oh Christ."

Pasty skin stretched over sharp bones like worn leather. Faces soaked with dread and tears. Eyes like wet pebbles. Teeth as black as bitumen. There's the cattle: slumped over tattered mattresses and clustered around a small feeding trough. They're pale, naked, and mutilated. They moan and whimper like animals. They shiver in the darkness.

"Oh Christ", he mutters again as his thumb slips off the spark wheel, propelling him to stumble backwards like a blind man, "Oh Jesus."

"W-w-wait!"

He can hear them stagger after him. He can hear them drag their bloody stumps across the ground. He can hear them weep and wheeze in agony, and he can feel bile bubble up in his throat as soon as he's reached the tiny cone of light that trickles through the opening.

"H-h-h-help… h-help us… "

His breath rattles in his chest as he clambers up the stairs on all fours, kicking and striking at them as if they're a horde of pesky critters. The woman right next to him, she's already there to catch him. Already there to hoist him up and shove him out of harm's way. Already there to send the cattle back into the murk.

"No, no, no, plea –"

She pulls at his arm and helps him up. The door falls shut and he steps on it. Under his feet, the wooden planks creak and shudder with the pounding of a dozen fists. The pleas are muffled now, just a hushed choir of panic and misery.

"Dad?"

"What?" he snaps.

Carl jumps and points at the window. His pulse runs off the rails when he sees them: three bearded men and a spinster with a kerchief drawing nearer from the fields. They're wrapped up in rags and armed with rifles. He turns to the boy and the woman, sweat dripping from his upper lip.

"Run", he tells them.

They barge through the backdoor and leap into the woods, hounded by a burst of gunshots, the wailing of the cattle, and the growling harbingers of yet another storm. _Eat or be eaten_. That's what happens to people these days. They get squashed by the law of the jungle. They die or they feed.

The memory of bottle-blond Sam getting his throat slashed by the little old lady he used to drive to church every Sunday is still fresh in his mind, and his grip on Carl's forearm increases tenfold. _Eat or be eaten, eat or be eaten_. Behind him, the woman curses under her breath.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The rain aids in obscuring their tracks. They find a river in the early afternoon and make a stop there to clean themselves in the ice-cold water. He tries not to stare at her too much and stumbles over incoherent words of gratitude when she lathers his hair with their last piece of soap. He catches a glimpse of his face swimming in the slick and he doesn't recognise himself. He sighs with reverence when she snags an oversized beanie from her backpack.

"It's pink", his boy complains, scrunching up his nose and holding the garment between his thumb and forefinger as if he's deeply offended by the sheer sight of it, "Pink is a colour for girls."

"So?" she asks with smirk and an air of mock-innocence.

"I'm not a girl!"

"Well, you sure as hell acted like one when I beat you in Monopoly."

"That was _ages_ ago and you only won because Dad wasn't paying attention!"

Unbeknownst to the two of them, Rick blushes and busies himself with the buttons of his denim shirt. Carl is right of course. Back then, he could've easily sacked both Park Place and Boardwalk, but he was too overwhelmed by the whole situation. A night of laughter and board games with his son and his long-time crush. In his fucked-up house. _In the midst of the fucking apocalypse_. It was the weirdest, most gratifying thing that had happened to him in a very long time.

Reluctantly, Carl pulls the beanie over his head and makes sure to walk ahead of them for the next two hours, grousing and grouching like a surly old man and wading through the slush with his arms flailing and his knapsack bouncing against his back. The woman right next to Rick chuckles softly.

"He's the cutest."

"You should've seen him right after he was born. His fingers were all pale and shrivelled and his head looked like a deflated balloon. He would've freaked you out."

"Oh stop it", she groans, swatting at his arm and shrouding her amusement behind a half-assed frown, "He's beautiful. I bet he was beautiful then, too."

"How do you know?"

"Because all babies are beautiful. It's an unwritten rule."

"You learned that in med school?"

"Shut up."

There it is, the radiant smile that never fails to send his heart aflutter. He thought they were going to die today, and now he's here, accidentally grazing her knuckles with his pinkie because he likes to hold her hand while his boy isn't looking. Because he likes to keep his eyes on the road as their palms come together. Because he likes to contain his own smile when their fingers entwine. Because he likes to be _with_ her even if it's for just a couple of seconds.

He's spectacularly screwed. He always has been when it comes to her. The more aware he became of his feelings for her, the more compelled he felt to bribe his clueless wife with cheap tricks and over-the-top romantic gestures. Suddenly, he was desperate to remember their wedding anniversary because it gave him the opportunity to sweep her off her feet with tickets for the opera – even though he cringed and sunk into his seat while a bunch of dudes in weird costumes screamed at him in Italian for over three hours – and a table at one of those new fancy vegan restaurants – even though he couldn't fathom why someone would prefer a lump of tofu over a porterhouse steak.

He tried to be present all the time: at home, in bed, even during his shifts where he would actually take her spontaneous phone calls and pretend that he didn't have a buttload of paperwork to do. His colleagues – straight, white cops like him who also struggled to keep up a healthy work-life balance – would congratulate him on his efforts, not knowing that it was all just a ruse. That it was just a pathetic attempt to distract both his wife and himself from the massive guilt that pricked his skin day in, day out.

It didn't help that Lori befriended her since they went to the same gym. It didn't help that he began to picture them laughing and chatting over protein shakes or making plans for a girls' night out in the locker room. The thought alone always left him spooked, always made him feel like his wedding ring was a vice-like manacle that cut off his bloodstream. Consequently, he stopped acting like he was the paragon of a perfect husband, and watched his marriage regress into a bitter union weighed down by unvoiced reprovals, blatant disappointment, and mutual unhappiness. He's pretty sure that they wouldn't've lasted any longer. That they would've talked about seeing a counsellor or a divorce attorney if it hadn't been for all those alarming news reports about mass mortalities and natural disasters.

_You're still my wife, so I'm gonna take care of you_ , he told her during the first of many power cuts, _I'm gonna protect you no matter what._

She just glared at him and proceeded to busy herself in the kitchen. The golden tie that had kept them together for fourteen years flashed in the candlelight as she scrubbed one plate after another. With that, they stopped communicating altogether and he appreciated each day he had to leave the house and scavenge for food because sometimes, he'd run into his lovely neighbour and trade some candles for a can of powdered milk.

"I'm glad you're here", he says after a while, "I'm glad you came and helped me with –"

"You were doing fine."

He huffs out a laugh and shakes his head.

"No. No, I wasn't."

In fact, he was losing his goddamn mind. He was seeing things, hearing things. He was sick with worry over his son. He raided pharmacy after pharmacy and came up with nothing but band-aids. The shovel in his tool shed and the grave in his backyard followed him into his dreams until he was about to give in and give up.

He risks a quick glance at her. She looks so serene. He can't tell if their encounter with the butchers affected her in any way. He can't tell if she's okay with how he handled things. If she would've helped those people – the cattle – or if she would've abandoned them, too. He comes to the conclusion that it doesn't really matter. They didn't have the time to argue about it. They had to get out of there.

He squeezes her hand and he doesn't want to let go. He doesn't want to wreck his brain about the past and whether he deserves her or not. No. Right now, he wants to take more from her than he can stomach and see if he'll survive.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

He almost cries when they find an apple despite it being rather small and slightly overripe. She becomes a bit aggressive and tells him to take at least two slices of it. One bite and his bowels turn inside out. The pain is maddening, but it keeps him from slipping away.

Hours later, they make camp in a lone car on a desolated highway bridge. Down in the gorge, another river tears at chunks of scree and crusty roots. They huddle up in the backseat. She offers to take watch again and he tells her to stop. He tells her to go to sleep. He knows it's hard, but he wants her to try. Stretched out between them, Carl is taken hostage by a light slumber, mumbling nonsense about ice cream, kittens, and comic book heroes.

"He's the only thing I don't want to fail", he rasps, peering down at his boy and wiping a strand of matted, chestnut brown hair from his forehead; he used to do that every time he read him a bedtime story, "My job is to take care of him."

"No, it's not", she says empathetically, "Your job is to love him, Rick. You were appointed to do that by God."

He swallows hard and stares at her. She's curled up with her arms coiled around her knees and her temple resting against the side window. She used to sit like that on his front porch in the evening, her dark eyes fixed on something he couldn't make out in the foggy gloom. He'd plop down beside her and they'd share a cup of thin lemon balm tea. Sometimes, they'd talk about their former jobs and favourite books. Sometimes, they'd talk about his dead wife. Sometimes, they'd keep quiet and watch a forest fire rise in the east.

Those were the days he cherished most. Those days of frail peace and comfortable silence. Those days where he would pretend that they were the only three people left in this world. Those days where he would prepare a Spartan breakfast with a faint smile and listen to her and Carl joke around in the dining room. Those days he never wanted to end.

"I will kill anyone who touches him."

She doesn't flinch.

"Me, too."

Her voice is even and rich with certainty. He knows that she made that decision a long time ago. Possibly when they raided an abandoned shopping mall in Colville and nearly ran into a gang of marauders led by Joe Helm, famous ex-con and one of the many self-declared rulers of the dystopian wasteland that used to be Harrison County.

He thinks back to how she gripped her sword while they tore through the woods. How they dove into a lake of mud that was veiled by snaggy shrubbery. How they clamped their hands over each other's mouths. How Carl squirmed in his arms and sputtered against his palm. How her eyes were wide with terror and how he prayed that the butchers wouldn't find them. How he prayed that they wouldn't end up in that basement like the rest of the cattle.

His gaze travels up and down her profile. Her hair is pulled into a low ponytail, a few rebellious braids framing her face just how he likes it. Half-swallowed by her tanned parka and green army pants, she looks disturbingly fragile, completely different from the tough chick he met before cannibalism became a common practice. To him, she's still beautiful, though. Still sublime and awe-inspiring.

"I think I'm in love with you."

The words slump from his mouth like melting snow slumps from the edge of a roof. He's doesn't know if he just screamed at her or if it was all in his head. Either way, the flutter in his chest devolves into a deranged war dance that leaves him trembling and out of breath. Gentle as ever, she doesn't keep him in suspense.

"I know."

_What?_

"S-Since when?"

"I'm not sure", she says, shrugging lightly and smiling that smile of hers; that terrible, beautiful smile that enslaved him from day one, "Maybe since you invited me to your home and asked me to live with you."

He gives her a nod even though he has a feeling that that's not entirely true. Even though he wants to ask why she never said anything. Why she never confronted him. Why she never turned him down or told him that he's not alone in this.

He doesn't coerce her into elaborating on her answer. He blinks at her for a second and bites back a grin when she ducks her head like she's shy or something. He knows damn well that she isn't – not really, so maybe she's just flattered? Maybe he didn't ruin everything with his ruthless candour?

He watches her fall asleep. He smiles when Carl abandons him with a cranky grunt and moves to crawl into her lap. As if on cue, she wraps her arms around his boy and pulls him close to her chest, both of them stuck in a drowsy snorefest.

Around dawn, he climbs out of the car and squints at the pale early morning sun. The tarmac is slippery, so he takes his time to get to the bridge railing. Yesterday was a shit-show and now they're surrounded by crumbling pine trees, in plain sight for all sorts of predators. A light breeze licks at the back of his neck. To his left and right, the hills are grey and glazed with dew and hoarfrost. It's getting colder again.

He takes his gun from his belt and whips out the cylinder. Three bullets, just in case. That's what he and Lori _agreed_ on in the beginning. Two years into this mess and his wife became tired of waiting. Two years and she was high on vicious apathy.

_I can't take it anymore_ , she muttered through clattering teeth while she cooked up some instant cocoa for Carl, whose relentless coughing seeped through the ceiling like the threnody of a febrile ghost, _He's not made for this world. Neither am I. Neither are you._

_Listen to yourself. What is wrong with yo–_

_You just don't wanna see it_ , she sighed wearily before she pointed at the gun that sat between them on the counter, _And you're never gonna get it done. You're never gonna do it, right? You're too scared. You'd rather watch us freeze to death than be a man and set us free._

_Shut the fuck up!_

He didn't recognise her then, this cold-hearted bully who wore the clothes, scent, and face of the woman he once swore to spend the rest of his life with. He wanted to shake her, but in the end, he went upstairs to sit with his boy. About a week later, Lori was gone.

He slips his hand into his coat pocket and digs for his wedding band. He can't remember what made him carry it around for so long. He almost forgot that it was still there. He'd bought it for fifty bucks and told her that it was a family heirloom because he knew she was a hopeless romantic. He also told her that he'd love her forever, which turned out to be a vital error on his behalf.

He thinks about the confession he made a few hours ago. He consoles himself with fact that she didn't tell him to fuck off, and he thinks about his boy claiming that they're the good guys. Reminding him that they gotta carry the fire. He drops the ring on the railing, pushes it to the very edge, and walks back to the car.

The air is crisp, shout through with tiny scraps of hope and vague opportunities.


	3. The Past

Dumb luck leads them to a ragged backyard where they find another trapdoor hidden under dead sloe and withered weeds. This time, however, it’s all steel and concrete. This time, a neon lamp comes to life with a flicker and a croaky hum. This time, there’s no cattle but rows of metal racks bursting with _real food_.

Untouched cans of peaches, pears, and tomato soup. Giant plastic water jugs and MRE cartons wrapped up in foil. A small kitchen unit, a portable heater, and a dining table with four mismatching chairs. One adjacent room with a closet and a bunk bed, another with a sink, a toilet, and a shower stall. Spearmint toothpaste, soap, and running water. Blankets, bedrolls, and batteries. Clean clothes and cheap china. A stack of envelopes and medical bills in the top drawer of the nightstand that gives them some information about the person who built this place.

It’s fair to say that Mr Eugene Porter – a science teacher who used to work at the local elementary school before he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer – was probably a wayward genius and on good terms with the military. Chances are that he was also pretty popular with his students. Otherwise they wouldn’t’ve sent him tons of letters full of get-well wishes and tiny drawings of winged cows, butterflies, and a stickman with a mullet juggling colourful test tubes in front of a group of smiling children.

Despite that, there’s no unequivocal explanation as to why he never made it to the bunker in time. He would’ve been prepared for anything, but maybe he was in the hospital when the first big thunderstorm came to ravage the land. Maybe he was already dead.

“Do you think we should thank him?” his boy asks whilst digging into his giant load of mac and cheese.

Rick freezes, still overstrained by the whole situation. By the absurdity of it. The sheer fucking absurdity of having a roof over his head and a warm meal waiting for him on his plate. Mashed potatoes and gravy. A glass of 7 Up. It’s unreal.

“I guess we could do that”, the woman right next to him chimes in before she brings her bowl to her mouth and slurps up the remains of her chicken soup; she wipes her chin with the back of her wrist and regards the kid with a wink and an encouraging smile.

“Will you do it, Michonne?”

“Why don’t you?”

“I don’t know how.”

“’Course you do. You know how to say thank you.”

Chewing on his lower lip, Carls looks a little lost. He’s cowled up in a dark green Dartmouth hoodie and the legs of his chequered pyjama pants are rolled up to his ankles. His socks are purple and printed with tiny four-leaved clovers. His face is still blotched with red from his piping hot bubble bath. After a moment, he clasps his hands.

“Dear Mr Porter”, he begins with his eyes closed, “Thank you for all this food and stuff. We know that you saved it for yourself and if you were here we wouldn’t eat it no matter how hungry we were. We’re sorry that you didn’t get to eat it and we hope that you’re safe in heaven with God”, he looks at his father, “Is that okay?”

“Yeah”, Rick says with a firm nod to emphasise his approval because he doesn’t know what else to do, “I think that’s okay.”

His skin goes up in flames when she places her hand on his forearm, and he thinks about what happened on the bridge. She doesn’t treat him differently now. If anything, she has become more concerned about his wellbeing and he likes to think that she started behaving that way because she cares about him. Maybe not as much as he cares about her – because that’s simply impossible – but still enough to tell him when to stop and rest.

For some reason, it all reminds him of the early days back in his hometown when she would make her rounds in the neighbourhood and distribute free first aid kits to those in need. He was hiding in the living room when his wife asked her if she wanted to join them for dinner, and he felt oddly relieved when he heard her decline Lori’s offer in the politest manner. She’s always had a natural knack for that, turning people down without hurting their feelings.

He stares at her hand.

It’s strange. He was so sure that he’d die if she didn’t answer him straight away. He was sure that he’d be bitter and heartbroken about it, but it’s nice to see that he was wrong. He loves her, and the fact that she knows how to set priorities – that she knows how to focus on keeping his son alive instead of entangling herself in banalities – makes him love her even more, so he’s going to wait until she’s ready to come to him.

“Your food’s getting cold”, she says, patting his arm lightly, “You should eat. Carl and I are gonna take care of the dishes, so you can go and fix your face.”

“My face?”

He fights the urge to reach up and feel for any cuts or bruises he might’ve sustained during their time in the wilderness. He thinks back to the scraggy stranger who stared back at him from the river surface with haunted eyes. He used to be more than that. He used to be a man of the law. A husband. A human being.

“It’s losing the war”, she expounds cheekily.

The flash of her teeth steals the air from his lungs. She nearly killed him when she emerged from the bathroom about an hour ago, dressed in a powder blue robe and with her braids piled on top of her head. The sight of her – clean, relaxed, _smiling_ – left him with a pleasurable twinge of arousal. It still does, but thankfully, Carl’s snickering snaps him out of his daze.

“Yeah, Dad. You look like a caveman.”

“Thanks, son.”

He puts a spoonful of potatoes in his mouth. They’re kinda bland, but in this world bland is tantamount to bursting with flavour, so he ends up scarfing it all down in record time – much to the amusement of his companions. After a while, his boy tells a story about how he would squash the peas Lori used to serve him with his fork and then used the green pulp to paint the underside of the dinner table.

The woman right next throws her head back in laughter and Rick smirks around his spoon. Silently, he sends up his own prayer hoping that whatever deity had brought them to this place will grace them with a few more days like these before they’d have to move on and get back on the road.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

After dinner, they switch off the neon lamp and light up some candles to save electricity. He can hear their playful banter on his way to the bathroom. It’s almost like they’re back in his house. He likes that idea.

He trims his beard with manicure scissors because the woman right next to him already claimed the safety razor. In the shower, he tries to imagine what her thighs would feel like under his palm, and then he scrubs the thought off his skin along with all the grime that’s been clinging to his body since that morning they spent in the river.

_Oh, the river..._

How it leeched on to her back and swathed her like a light-tight cloak. How it trickled down her ribs and left a trail of goose bumps in its wake. How she stepped into the water and became one with it. The memories flash and dance before his eyes while he slips into a pair of sweatpants and a brown t-shirt and makes his way back to the kitchen. His boy is nowhere to be seen, but there’s the faint sound of his sleepy mumbling coming through the bedroom door.

“How do I look?”

She turns away from the sink and smiles at him, still wearing that goddamned robe. Her gaze – curious and unrelenting – makes him nervous. His face grows hot. _Fuck_. He shouldn’t’ve asked.

“Better”, she says, “A little less crazed.”

He almost laughs at that.

“Just a little?”

Her smile broadens and she resumes her task. He’d help her if it weren’t for the sudden canter of his heart. He walks up to her until he’s right behind her because there’s nothing he can do about it, this primal need to be close to her. To get sucked into her orbit and die there.

“You know, Lori used to hate on your beard all the time.”

As a matter of fact, Lori used to hate on a lot of things. The news, the weather, the brambles in Mr Horvath’s front yard. Rick’s beard was probably just the tip of the iceberg. Nonetheless, he always wondered what they would talk about at the gym or during their occasional trips to the mall. Turns out it was him and all his alleged faults – at least sometimes.

“I miss her”, she says, “She was a good friend.”

He bites his tongue. He can’t deny that. Back in high school, Lori had flocks of people following her around – not because she intimidated them with some sort of queen bee bravado but because she was a nice person. She was probably a great friend. He just never really got to see that side of her because they refused to give themselves the chance to be friends before they tied the knot and became the prime example of a disillusioned wife and a sad-sack husband who spent most of his days secretly lusting after his oblivious neighbour.

“I miss her”, she says again; unable to help himself, he reaches out and splays his fingers over the fake silk that covers her shoulder blades, “But I’m also mad at her for what she did to you and Carl.”

A lump grows in his throat like it always does when he thinks about his wife these days. All those years of them wasting away together had ruined them in so many ways that even the end of the world couldn’t push them to fix their problems. It just got worse and then, when their son got sick and needed them the most, they fell apart completely.

He remembers finding her in the woods the night after she left. She was staring holes into the sky while the shadows of a thousand snowflakes flittered across her sunken cheeks. She was finally at peace and he took a step back to think about how much his boy was going to miss her. He stared, blinked, and stared some more before he picked her up and carried her back home. He never hated her more than in that moment.

The woman right next to him jumps and turns at his touch. Her smile is wobbly and her eyes are dimmed by wistfulness. Last time she looked at him like that, sympathy tore his heart into shreds when he learned about her former boyfriend and the massive occupational stress that pushed him into a ready-made casket. Last time she looked at him like that, they fed each other golden shots of dopamine and merged with the darkness that embowered them.

Her hands – warm and slick with soapsuds – creep up the sides of his neck and sink into his damp curls. He cups her face and her tears dash against his thumbs. A soundless sob jostles her chest.

“You said you knew I was in love with you when I took you in, but that’s not when it _happened_ , ‘Chonne”, his own eyes begin to sting as he leans in to whisper against her mouth, “It happened _before_.”

Her lips taste like sweet lime and her tongue is made of saccharine. He wants her to believe that they’re bound by more than the fading faces of their belated loved ones. He wants her to believe that this isn’t just a by-product of past tragedies and personal bereavements. He wants her to believe that this is different, so he sighs and pours it all – his love, hopes, doubts, and anxieties – into the kiss.

Tilting her head, she sets the course and for a while, they stumble around in the candlelight. A lone plate wakes with a startled clatter when she moves to sit on the edge of the table and pulls him closer, so that he’s standing between her legs.

In the back of his mind he knows that this might be nothing but another fantasy. He’s dreamed of pleasing her so many times, he wouldn’t be surprised if he blinked and found himself back in the bathroom, and the thought alone fills him with dread. The thought alone keeps him from reacting the way he’s supposed to react – that is, until she drags her nails across his scalp and degenerates him into a keening mess.

“Ssssh”, she urges him, nuzzling his jaw and cheek, and tapping her fingertips against his lips as if to fend off the small, pathetic noises that sprawl from his vocal chords.

She’s right – _of fucking course she is_ – but how is he supposed to stay calm when she takes hold of his right hand and brings it down to the sash of her robe? How is he supposed to bite back his entrancement when his fingers brush her bare breasts and stomach? How is he supposed to do all that when being allowed to touch her like this is something he’s been waiting, hoping, and praying for since they shared a couple of tear-tanged kisses in that drugstore in Lexington?

_No, scratch that._

It’s something that’s been brewing up in the depths of his skull since he watched her small-talk the mailman into submission. At the time, the world wasn’t scarred by hunger and savagery, and he was free to rave and fantasise. At the time, he knew that he’d never give voice to his lewd daydreams – or act on them – so he came to terms with them and filed them under idle curiosity.

It worked out pretty well for him in the beginning: he’d dream of her and wake up in the middle of the night – hard, confused, and soaked with sweat – while Lori tossed and muttered on her side of the bed, and he could live with that since no-one forced him to admit that he wanted to fuck a woman who obviously _wasn’t_ his wife. No-one forced him to see things for what they really were, but then he wanted to be her friend because her smile was intoxicating and apparently, even the conservative elites of the neighbourhood failed to resist her subtle charm for too long and succumbed to it eventually.

So, he tried to talk himself into the idea that becoming her friend would somehow put an end to his ill-advised infatuation. That maybe – hopefully – he’d learn something about her that would turn him off. A gross habit or a certain view on politics that would scare him away and remind him that he had no right to further jeopardise his marriage.

But none of that ever happened. In a brutal twist of events, his wife beat him to the punch and he was left feeling like he was the butt of some cruel joke. And he didn’t quite get it until Lori started gushing over this new friend of hers. This kind, intelligent, remarkable woman who lived across the street and had a fling for yoga, gardening, and tacky true crime documentaries. Hell, even her weird obsession with _Blood Relatives_ and _Evil Stepmothers_ didn’t stop him from pining after her like some helpless middle schooler. Just picturing her watching that ridiculous crap with a bowl of sticky sweet popcorn sitting in her lap made him smile on a daily basis.

“Please, we gotta”, she mewls, lifting her hips when he tugs at the waistline of her panties, “W-We gotta be quiet.”

The cotton – slightly damp and candy apple red – comes off and he palms her womb. He moans and drops his head into the crook of her neck. He was never good at this and he’s worried that it might take him too long to get her ready, but she knows exactly what she wants. She isn’t too shy to guide him until he finds a spot that prompts her to surge, wiggle, and falter in his embrace like a broken windup toy.

A flick of his wrist sees her breaking her own rules. She curses under her breath and he’d be fucking proud of himself if it weren’t for the growing pressure in his groin and the way she starts to buck against his hand. He curls his fingers and falls in love with her all over again. He tells her so and nips at the underside of her jaw.

_I love you._

_I love you._

_I love you._

As expected, being inside of her trumps every experience he’s ever made before. It’s because he belongs there, he knows that now. He knows that his rightful place is between her legs with his sweatpants pooling around his ankles and his trembling hands fused to the table top and the hollow of her knee.

Her pulse thumps against his forehead and he sucks at her collarbone, rocking into her in a rhythm that is probably too slow and far from perfect. Still, she’s eager enough to mirror his movements. And she’s perfect. She’s tight, she’s bossy, and she spurs him on with a litany of choked-out obscenities that shatter his virtues and make him dizzy with want.

She’s astonishing and he can’t believe how they got here. From stepping into the bunker to a cosy family dinner to him battling his desire in for her in the shower to a one-sided conversation about his wife and, ultimately, to this.

“I – I can’t –“

Breathing through clenched teeth, he tries to draw away and give them both a break, but she doesn’t let him. She spikes his guns when she arches her back and wraps her legs tighter around his waist with a whiny growl. It’s a shame that he doesn’t last longer and spills then and there.

“It’s okay”, she croaks, cradling his head and kissing his hairline as he huffs and gasps into the base of her throat, “I’m with you. I’m right here with you.”

Her words ring in his ears and in some way, they mean more to him than a simple I love you, too. He’s still hard, still flexing and circling his hips, and maybe he’ll never be able to stop. A tiny smirk sparks off the corner of his mouth.

He comes up for air and takes her in.

She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. And she’s so dear, so important to him. She’s the unflappable force that pumps the blood through his veins, the thin connective tissue that keeps his organs from coming unstitched. Losing her is something he can’t bear to think about because he knows that it would gut him – _literally_. It would break him to pieces and in the end, there’d be nothing left of him. He sighs and brings their foreheads together.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Unlike him, she comes oh-so quietly.

She bows down to mild paranoia in the aftermath while he squats down and assists her in stepping back into her panties. She starts to ramble when he gives her his t-shirt. Something cute and ridiculous about her being afraid that they might’ve traumatised the boy. He blows out the candles, takes her hand, and leads her to the bedroom.

“See?”

Up in the top bunk, Carl is still very much asleep. His face is a bit scrunched up and for a second, he lifts his hand to swat at some imaginary fly before he lets out a grunt and turns to lie on his stomach.

“Okay, but maybe one of us should take the floor”, she insists half-heartedly.

“No”, he says and moves to the closet; he finds another t-shirt for him and throws a pair of boxer shorts in her direction, “I can’t sleep when you’re not right next to me. We both know that.”

Her wide eyes and nervous smile make him want to melt into a puddle. He’s hers now. It’s a simple fact and she’ll have to get used to it.

Reluctantly, she joins him on the bottom bunk and lays her head on his chest. She breathes out a small chuckle when he snakes his arms around her upper body, and she leans in when his lips meet the space between her brows. He can already see this turning into their nightly ritual: her fretting over something and him practically dying to kiss her troubling thoughts away.

“So, are you a bed hog?” he asks.

“What?”

“I just realised that we’ve never shared a real bed before, so I gotta know if you’re gonna shove me up against the wall, push me off the side, or if I’m gonna freeze my ass off ‘cause you need to have the blanket all to yourself.”

She rewards him with a snort and a giggle – probably because she thinks it’s hilarious when he goes overboard with his drawl – and he feels like he just won a medal. Even though he made her purr less than fifteen minutes ago, making her _laugh_ is still his favourite thing to do.

“Don’t you worry. I learned how to sleep in small spaces during my residency.”

“I bet you breezed through the oral boards without breaking a sweat.”

“Oh, no. I was a complete mess. My mentor, Dr Monroe, switched off her cell phone because I called and texted her every ten minutes the night before. And I couldn’t sleep, so I cleaned my apartment, watched old period dramas, and ate a whole family size box of Twinkies. I can’t remember a thing about the exam, but I know that I nearly screamed my lungs out when I results came in.”

“Because you aced it”, he concludes confidently.

“Because I aced it."

He peers down at her and her grin is so fulgent that he has to kiss her again, simply because he loves the idea of her kicking ass in and out of an OR. He knows what she’s capable of and he’s more than glad that he got the chance to witness her in action once or twice before everything went to shit.

Keeping her cool and using her laser focus to save some poor soul from a grim fate, she never failed to amaze him and his colleagues from the station, who soon referred to her as Harrison Memorial’s very own MVP. He became a little jealous when he learned that she was dating Zeke King from the crime scene unit, and he became extremely frustrated when he stumbled upon them at the grocery store. They looked good together, like they were starring for an eHarmony commercial, but he had a hard time pretending not to feel relieved when he got wind of their split-up a couple of months later.

Her body curls with a yawn. Above them, Carl kicks off an incoherent speech about chocolate pudding and tennis balls.

“We’re gonna talk to him tomorrow, okay?” he mumbles into her hair, completely taken with her scent.

She nods against his chest and he can tell that she’s on the brink of falling into a sweet coma. He can’t blame her for feeling exhausted after the day they had. His own limbs start to grow fuzzy with fatigue and he allows himself to close his eyes when she places a hand on his belly and hums into his shirt.

“Okay.”


	4. The Shore

Back on the road, the mud smacks and squeals under their feet. Grey and brittle like a lump of ashes, the sun doesn't do much to keep them from shivering from the cold. The wind slows them down. It's only a matter of days until the first snow will come to hound and pester them.

The people are gone and so is everything that came with them in the first place. Only a few bleached-out shreds of the past – the black, white, red, and blue flag of the city, a cluster of dented street signs, and a couple of billboards promoting some annual food festival – commemorate what used to be a famous Southern escape.

"So, have you ever been to Tybee Island before, Michonne?" his boy asks as they trudge through a field of sordid suburbs.

"Once or twice when I was still in preschool", she says, "I don't remember much of it, but according to my Dad, I was very good at building sandcastles."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Do you think we can build one together when we get there?"

He sounds so hopeful, just like the pint-sized rug rat that would run around the yard in a Batman costume even though Halloween was still five months away. Obviously, costumes and Halloween are things of the past. Same goes for sandcastles. And yet Rick, the eternal observer, is struck with boundless adoration when the woman right next to him proceeds to indulge his son.

"Sure, kid."

"Awesome!" Carl exclaims, quickening his pace to catch up with the man who's walking ahead of them, "What about you, Mr Jones?"

"Oh, I might be a bit too old for that", Morgan croons with a gentle smile, "I'm sure Duane would love to join you, though."

With that, he rearranges his grip on the sleeping boy who is slumped over his left shoulder. Duane's a tiny kid. About ten years old and barely 4'1 tall. His mop of dark brown curls is hidden under a beaver-fur hat and his camouflage anorak is way too big for him, so there's always a rope or seatbelt wrapped around his waist. He could easily blend in with his surroundings if it weren't for his bright yellow rubber boots.

He was playing with a dusty fire truck toy when they found him in an abandoned bus shelter somewhere between Oak Park and Cobbtown. He asked them where they were going and next thing they knew, Morgan jumped out from behind a dead holly shrub, threatened them with a sawed-off shotgun, and ordered them to describe the taste of human flesh.  
It was a test to see if they were monsters or not. Rick knew that, but it still pissed him off. Luckily, the woman right next to him was quick to intervene, so now they're five people looking for a place to call home.

It could be anything, really. A cave, a riverbed, or four walls and a roof. It should be safe like the bunker, but maybe a bit more enduring in terms of basic supplies. It should be permanent – that's a given – but what is made to last longer than a blink of the eye these days? What is made to last in general when there's nothing left but fires, cannibals, and the low rumble of another dying forest?

"Let's make a competition out of it", she suggests with a hint of hidden merriment, "Kids versus adults. Your Dad can be the judge since he's older than the four of us combined."

He doesn't mind her teasing him. He doesn't mind that Carl and Morgan's laughter pulls Duane out of his slumber, and he doesn't mind that the boy regards him with a shy giggle after they let him in on the joke.

"You're hilarious", he says dryly as the two of them fall further behind, "I'm not _that_ old, you know."

Her guffaw is a counter-attack that tears at the corners of his mouth until they're spread into a crooked grin. It reminds him of the first time he pressed his lips against hers and marvelled at how quickly everything fell into place. At how quickly his pent-up anguish tailed away and made room for something much, much sweeter.

"Oh, but you are", she shoots back in a singsong voice, and he'd probably sell his soul just so they could spend the rest of their lives like this: bickering and bantering like there's no tomorrow, "The age gap is real, Mister."

"Is that so?"

She scoffs at his cockiness.

"Listen, I was still watching Sesame Street and playing with Barbie dolls when you and your friends went to your first high school freshman party, sipped light beer from red solo cups, and rocked out to INXS and Milli Vanilli."

_Crap._

"I should've never told you 'bout that", he groans.

"Why not? It's cute."

Her tone is light and their shoulders bump together. He remembers her telling him that he must be the first person to use the phrase rock out so confidently. He would've died from embarrassment if she hadn't pulled him in for a reassuring kiss then – much to Carl's more or less playful mortification.

"Well, if you say so –"

"And you're a cute old man."

"Oh my God."

The warmth in his chest shoots up to his face. He hides a bashful smile with a bow of his head when she dissolves into another chuckle. Muttering under his breath, he takes her hand and pulls her with him.

Down in the bunker, time became a mystery to them and they decided to pick up right where they left off in Cynthiana. They ate and slept and told each other stories about all the luxuries that used to bother them before – homework, slow WiFi, and dental treatments – and they held heated debates on music, comic books, and the pros and cons of soy milk.  
They took one of the MRE cartons and made a new Monopoly game board. After two rounds, Carl finally got his revenge and celebrated his hard-fought victory with a handful of Big Kats and a gallon of grapefruit lemonade.

Sooner or later, however, the lights began to flicker again and they ran out of water, so they filled their bags with all the food they could carry and stumbled back into the woods. In the night, he held them close and watched them sleep. He wiped the dirt from their cheeks and stared up to the starless skies. He sat by the fire and negotiated with gods he didn't believe in, and his eyes turned into wells full of salt and love and despair.

"You okay?"

He looks at her and then at his son, who's now playing I spy with my little eye with their new companions. These two. His boy and his woman. _They're_ made to last, and he loves them so much that it hurts, so much that he can barely breathe sometimes. Squeezing her fingers, he works his mouth around the truth.

"Yeah."

She smiles at him and he thinks about hardwood floors and mint green curtains. He thinks about towels and bedsheets drying in the sun. He thinks about his boy – safe and happy as he beats the high score of his new favourite video game – and he thinks about her. He thinks about tiny knitted socks, her round belly, and the stone blue walls of the upstairs nursery.  
He thinks about a future that tastes like honey and smells like small-cupped daffodils. A future where all he has to worry about is a speeding ticket or a hole in his shirt. A future that is built on her ability to make him feel like they won a little even though they lost enough to strike their colours.

Swing sets, coffee mugs, and maternity dresses. A beautiful house in a beautiful neighbourhood full of beautiful people. What a perfectly constructed pipe dream. He wants to shake his head at himself, but it looks like she's already two steps ahead of him when she stirs his wishful thinking with just two simple words.

"I'm okay."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

They make it to Tybee Island and his face falls with every step he takes. Buckled buildings and power poles that look like burnt candlewicks, heaps of concrete and miry reams of silt and garbage that have been poured onto the streets. It's all gone, scythed down and reduced to a pulp made of grit, bones, and animal scat.

_Rumour has it that the people there have managed to build a safe zone. Sounds good, huh?_

He used to be a cop, so it's not like he's never seen a dead body before. As a matter of fact, he's seen a lot of them. He's seen men, women, toddlers, and teenagers. He's seen them stabbed, shot, and beaten beyond recognition, and he's seen them after they'd been stitched back together in the morgue. He's seen his own wife, for fuck's sake, but he's not sure if he can come back from a sight like this.

_Sounds good, huh?_

The beach is a rough, leaden plane and the people of Tybee Island, stained and swollen, cover the sand like a shroud of snow. They must've tried to escape by boat when it – a thunderstorm, an earthquake, something – happened, but they never had a chance. They're still here, piled on top of each other and twisted into unnatural positions. Some of them have been ripped apart by scavengers, and the sound of the sea – the harrowing chant of lazy waves sucking on stiff limbs and tattered Sunday dresses – drowns out almost everything else.

_Sounds good, huh?_

"Dad?"

His eyes and mind snap back to his son, pale and visibly overwhelmed as he and Duane hold each other in a tight embrace. They look like they're about to cry. Like they can't or simply don't want to believe what they're seeing. His throat clamps up at the thought that they're too mature to dismiss this as a nasty glitch of their imagination.

"We gotta leave", Morgan says, apparently determined to keep his head in front of the boys, "I saw a couple of grocery stores on our way here. Maybe we should find a place to stay for the night and check them out tomorrow."

"Yeah", he rubs the bridge of his nose in an effort to get rid of the sick feeling that began to hit him in waves as soon as they passed the first row of cicatrised family homes roughly an hour ago, "'Chonne?"

She doesn't even pretend to acknowledge him. Her back is straight as a pole, her gaze oddly calm and calculated as it sweeps across the shore and then sinks its teeth into the horizon where wads of thick, black clouds pool together like enemy troops on the brink of another sanguinary battle. The wind picks up and claws at his face.

Her profile is as lovely as always, but the hard line of her mouth seeks to betray her. He already knows what this is about – and he hates it. He hates to see her like this and he hates the fact that there's probably nothing he can do about it. But that doesn't mean he's not going to try.

"'Chonne."

The crack in his voice doesn't startle her, so he takes a step in her direction. He's barely listening when Morgan mutters something about taking Carl and Duane to the pavilion so that they don't have to be near the bodies anymore.

His swallows hard and goes back in time. Back to that one evening in Cynthiana they sat on his front porch and talked about their biggest fears. Back to the evening she blessed him with a compassionate smile while he told her that he didn't like hospitals when he was a kid. That he didn't like the smell, the noise, the squeaky vinyl flooring, or the idea that a building had the power to devour sick people and excrete their corpses.

He goes back to the evening he told her that, years later, he reconsidered his position and came to loath the doctors instead – especially those who'd seek refuge at the local pub in-between shifts. Those who'd toss down drink after drink and brag about their achievements. Those who'd stare at the clock with bleary eyes as if they feared the moment they'd have to go back and save lives again. Most of all, though, he came to loath those doctors, who'd end up at the station and pace around in the drunk cell. Those who'd yell about how they – the gods in fucking white – didn't deserve such a cruel treatment, and those who'd cry with relief because being arrested prevented them from spending the rest of the night in an on-call room where someone could ask them for help.

Of course, his woman made him reconsider his position again since she knew better than to hide her insecurities behind a drinking problem or a bloated ego. If anything, she appeared to be well-aware of the grave responsibilities that went hand in hand with her profession.

_It's a tough place_ , she said with a shrug, _People expect you to be almighty. They expect you to stay calm and make the right decisions all the time, and boy do they raise hell when it turns out that you're just another stupid human being like them. I've seen some of the most talented interns fall apart and give up because they didn't know how to deal with the pressure. I never blamed them._

_Have_ you _ever thought about giving up?_

_No._

Her answer came like a shot and it was then that he finally knew how much of a fighter she really was. It was then that he finally knew that she was going to be the last and greatest love of his life. And it was this particular realisation that almost made him slip, but his manners and the grave in his backyard fought tooth and nail to hold him back for the next four or five months.  
Now that he's free, though – now that he knows what it's like to fall asleep and wake up right next to her – holding back isn't an option anymore. Not even when she turns to take him in with haunted eyes and a smile so pained and artificial that he can feel his heart dislodge and slump down to the pit of his stomach.

"Look at this", she says, almost wondrously before she chokes out a disbelieving giggle and slaps a hand over her mouth; her brows shoot up to her hairline and she cackles through a mesh made of trembling fingers, "I led us to a graveyard, I – "

She stops, snorts, laughs even harder, and he doesn't know what to do. He's heard about this before. He's heard that some people tend to laugh their heads off when they can't cope with a bad situation. This isn't a bad situation, though. This is a nightmare and it's killing her.

"'Chonne", he croaks for the third fucking time; his lungs constrict with sympathy and he blinks against the scorching heat that flares up behind his eyeballs as she bends over and laughs and laughs and laughs.

Too caught up in her nervous breakdown, she doesn't flinch or fight back when he wraps his arms around her. She doesn't stop laughing either, not until he tells her that he's sorry. Not until he tells her that none of this is her fault. Not until he tells her that she couldn't've known and that they're going to get through this.

He pulls her closer, his beautiful, devastated woman, and drops a kiss to the crown of her head. Her sobs bounce off his chest and her tears mingle with his neck and coat. Somewhere nearby, a lonely seagull sings about flash floods, hurricanes, and Mother Nature's sempiternal wrath.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

All this time, she's been there for him. All this time, she's been there to lift him up whenever he was about to sink to his knees and let this world tear him to pieces, and all this time, he's been expecting her to stand tall in the midst of chaos and destruction. All this time, he's been taking her strength for granted. All this time, he's been nothing but a blind, selfish idiot.

Another storm threatens to knock them down and they find shelter in the ravaged belly of a seafood restaurant. A giant plastic crab looms above the entry and they make a fire to warm themselves and heat up two cans of vegetable soup. After dinner, Morgan pulls a Bible out of his backpack and reads the Tower of Babel to the boys. His voice flitters through the dining room like a bird in a dusty cage while the rain slaps and flails against the windows. Rick isn't sure if a tale from the Old Testament makes for a decent bedtime story, but Carl and Duane seem to be somewhat enthralled by it, so he lets them be.

Hours later, when she's sandwiched between him and his son – propelled by his silent need to comfort her, Carl snuggled up to her and curled his arm around her waist before he dozed off in record time – she turns her head to look at him, weaves her fingers through his beard, and tells him that she loves him.

He swallows against the lump in his throat and smiles at her confession. She's still a bit shell-shocked, still struggling to come to terms with the fact that Tybee Island turned out to be a dead end. Trapping her hand between his palms, he makes a vow.

"We're gonna find another place."

"How do you know?"

"I've got plans for us."

Her brows crinkle with confusion.

"Plans?"

" _Big_ plans", he clarifies, shifting around until he's close enough to kiss her cheek and then her lips, "And nothing's gonna stop me from making them come true 'cause I'm a stubborn son of a bitch."

Her teeth glitter in the darkness. She doesn't complain when he throws his leg over hers and buries his face in her shoulder. Instead, she hums against his forehead, and they listen to the rain and their boy as he mutters about talking piglets and tap-dancing penguins.

In the morning, he's still wrapped around her slumbering form and whines with frustration when Carl and Duane poke his side and tell him that they have to pee. Morgan is still fast asleep, too, so he gets up with a grunt. Once they made it to the parking lot, he learns that the boys lured him outside for a very specific reason.

"Michonne was crying a lot yesterday", Carl mumbles sheepishly as they cross the frost-glazed macadam, "We don't like it when she's sad. We wanna know what we can do to make her smile again."

"Yeah", Duane agrees with a nod that causes his hat to slip forward and cover his eyes for a second, "Do you think we should tell her some jokes?"

"I – uh…", he doesn't know how he's supposed to tell them that it's going to take time and more than a couple of well-intentioned gestures to alleviate her pain, so he settles for the easiest answer, "I guess the best thing we can do is be there for her. You know, make sure that she's safe and show her how much we care about her."

Unfortunately, his statement fails to satisfy them and he's about to sigh and further explain himself when a snap of twigs hurls him into a state of all-consuming panic. He whirls around and whips out his gun.

"Dad?"

"Mr Grimes?"

"Get behind me", he growls, high on a bitter sense of foreboding and ready to take out who or whatever is lurking in the shadows of the curved willows that border the parking lot like a damaged barbed wire fence.

Something's wrong. He knows that because he double-checked the area with Morgan last evening. He knows that because all they found was a couple of dead rats wasting away in a bed of hard soil and yellowed pasturage. He knows that because –

"Please don't shoot", a male voice rings out from behind the trees, "I know it sounds like a cliché, but we come in peace."

_We._

Terror beats through his veins and his sweat glands explode. They're trapped and possibly outnumbered. They're fucking _surrounded_. He considers himself a pretty good shot, but he can't do shit with three bullets. And what about Morgan? Dear God - _what about his woman?_

Memories of the cattle unfold before his eyes. The gloom. The groans. The feeding trough. The stumps and stab wounds that oozed with blood and dark pus. He grits his teeth. He can't let that happen. He won't.

"Hey there."

Short, toffee brown hair, clean clothes, and a beard that rivals his own in terms of length and frizziness. Judging by the gleam and colour of his right arm, he's wearing a metal prosthesis. Did he kill his capturers? Did he follow in their footsteps?

His trail of thought is cut short when another stranger – armed with a crossbow and flanked by a German shepherd – enters the scene. Clad in combat boots, dark jeans, and a Navajo poncho, this one looks like the type of grumpy layabout Rick used to nick for vandalism or disorderly conduct when he was still a cop.

"We didn't mean to scare you", the guy with the prosthesis says whilst holding up his hands and offering a tentative smile, "My name is Aaron, this is Daryl", he points to his partner and his smile grows more confident, "I have good news."


	5. The Backyard

Mother Nature is still a bitch. She’s still out there, terrorising her abusers with occasional droughts and blizzards. She’s still clad in the colours of squalor, still wearing a crown made of bones and berries. Her teeth are still sharp and her scent is still heavy with peat and pine needles. She’s still an ill-tempered shrew, but the viciousness of her attacks has fizzled out considerably. Same goes for the fire in her eyes. All that’s left of it is a feeble glimmer that doesn’t seem so frightening anymore.

Maybe she dropped her butcher’s knife once she realised that taking revenge is actually a tiring activity. Maybe _that’s_ why her war songs – the wails and whispers that used to hide in every pebble stone and every scrap of soggy bark – drained away and yielded to a different kind of music.

A soft breeze skimming over waves of unmown grass. The faint clang of metal on metal. The flap of a rainbow pinwheel. Bees droning, chickens clucking, people chatting as they walk. Dead leaves ticking along the macadam and the tell-tale grumble of a teenager, who used to be as meek as a lamb before puberty swallowed him whole.

“Can I leave now?” his boy asks him as he dumps his empty cereal bowl into the sink, “I don’t wanna be late for class.”

In the old world, Rick had to switch into drill instructor mode every morning so that his son would make it to school in time. Then Mother Nature came along, prompting society to maul itself to death and Carl’s educational career to come to a standstill. And while Lori was rather heartbroken about it, the boy had a blast and made a show of throwing his math book into the trash. His future was gone anyway, so, with violence and moral brutalisation taking the reins, who would’ve thought that he’d ever have the chance to go to school again? And who would’ve thought that he’d _enjoy_ it this time?

_Probably neither of us_ , he thinks, watching Carl from where he’s leaning against the counter. His cheeks are almost as round as they used to be before they left for Tybee Island, and he’s made a habit of hiding his hair under his pink beanie no matter if it’s sweltering hot or raining pitchforks.

“What’s on your schedule?”

“Luke’s gonna tell us about the Stradivari clan.”

“You sure he’s okay with you guys calling him by his first name? You know, back in my day, our teachers expected us to –“

“Yeah, but this is the 21st century and Luke is cool, Dad”, Carl explains with a dramatic roll of his eyes – the _unlike you_ most certainly roaming around somewhere in the back of his mouth, “Besides, Duane and I promised to pick up Gracie and the twins, so I don’t have the time for one of _your_ history lessons right now.”

He throws him a pointed glare and Rick has to actively stop himself from taking offence. His boy is thirteen now. It’s well-known that thirteen-year-old boys are moody little monsters, so Carl acting like a douchebag is probably just normal – and normal is better than having dog for dinner or running around the woods with a pack of cannibals breathing down your neck.

Normal was what they were looking for when they fled Kentucky and battled their way through the wilderness. It’s what Aaron promised them when they sat in the back of an old RV and clutched their weapons. It’s what caused their shoulders to sag with relief when they arrived at the gates and listened to the sound of children playing behind the walls.

In the beginning, (re-)domestication offered a whole series of problems. The road was a part of them now. It slammed around the backs of their minds, unflinching and painfully persistent as they bounced from anxiety to anger to full-blown depression. It kept them up at night and left them tense and disoriented during the day, and it made them believe that they were stuck in a burial pit paved with blood and blackthorn.

Down there, they wallowed in their wariness. The climb seemed too chaotic. Too much of a risk for them to take, so they didn’t move until it was time for them to see the Beaufort Safe Zone for what it really is: not a trap, not some post-apocalyptic paradise but a small arcadian suburb bordering on a former military air base. A safe place with reinforced hangars that serve as warehouses and emergency shelters. A weird place full of lucky bastards and fellow survivalists. A place with a pantry, solar panels, and vegetable beds. A place with potential. A place made for plans  
.  
“Don’t be mean to your father”, his woman says as she saunters into the kitchen, “That’s _my_ job.”

As always, she’s a vision with her braids in disarray and the soft blaze of the morning setting her skin aglow. Her robe is a replica of the one she used to wear in the bunker. He found it during his first supply run and he remembers how her face lit up when he fished it out of his backpack and stuttered something about wanting her to feel comfortable.

“Hey, you.”

She makes a beeline for him, comes up on her toes, and goes in for a peck to his lips. Placing his hands on her waist, he sighs. In some ways, he’s still mourning the days Carl used to hang on his every word and follow him around like a baby duckling. His woman gathered as much a few months ago when she found him moping on the couch after his boy had asked him to keep a low profile, or rather _not be around at all_ next time his friends were coming over.

_Apparently, I’m the most embarrassing person alive_ , he complained with his arms crossed over his chest and his head nestled in her lap, _I don’t get it. He used to be such a sweet kid and now he’s just… fucking rude._

She twisted her lips in amusement. He knew that he sounded like a whiny child then. Her fingers in his hair consoled him to some degree, but the most part, he remained upset and glowered at her until she gave in to a snort and used her thumb to smooth out the angry wrinkle between his brows.

_You want me to cheer you up?_

In the end, there was only one correct answer to a question like that, so he dragged her up the stairs and into to the bedroom, spaced out on affection while she fumbled with his belt and giggled into his cheek. Watching her as she moaned and trembled in his arms dispelled his surliness – as did the sound of her gasping his name when he shifted his weight and went for a deeper set of thrusts – and he soon leapt to the conclusion that Carl avoiding him like the plague definitively had its perks, too.

“Hey, you”, he hums, meeting her halfway when she leans up to steal another kiss that turns his guts into jelly.

It’s been 18 months since they got here and sometimes, the road comes back to haunt them. Sometimes, Morgan can’t leave the house without his shotgun. Sometimes, Duane dreams about a thousand corpses scattered over pallid dunes. Sometimes, Carl wakes him in the middle of the night because he wet the bed again. Sometimes, his woman falls into old patterns and starts to hoard their food rations. Sometimes, his senses betray him and he can still smell the blood that used to stick to the sleeves and shearling collar of his coat.

Sometimes, he can’t believe his own luck. Sometimes, kissing his woman is the only thing that grounds him. Sometimes, moving his mouth against hers is the only thing that prevents him from freezing up with guilt, grief, and fear.

“You guys are disgusting!”

He jumps and scowls.

_That little shi –_

His woman breaks away to turn in his arms and confront the boy. The feeling of her butt pressed against his groin flings him into a fleeting stupor, so he tunes out most of her comeback. Fortunately, the red spots exploding on Carl’s cheeks and the way he storms out of the kitchen fill in the blanks for him. He holds back a smirk. She must’ve brought up Enid again.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you”, he mutters into her hair after the door falls shut.

“I’m just being efficient”, she says matter-of-factly, turning again and placing her fingers under his chin, “You wanna sit on the porch with me?”

Of course he does.

He complies with a kiss and takes her hand in his as they step outside. The backyard came with the house – just like the furniture, the clothes, and the running water. It’s littered with wildflowers and berry bushes, and there’s a tool shed full of dusty clay pots sitting bodkin between two crooked apple trees.

He didn’t dare to set foot on it at first, didn’t dare to enjoy the view of the fences and the military buildings that linger in the background. He stayed inside and kept his head down, convinced that it was only a matter of days until his new neighbours would turn on him and come to hurt his loved ones.

It all changed when he learned more about Aaron and Hershel, who had to sell their limbs so that they could feed their daughters before they found this place. When he met Sasha and Abraham, who knew about the horrors that prevailed beyond the walls. When he went on a run with Glenn and realised that building for the future was indeed possible – even in a world like this.

Wispy flecks of pink and yellow peek out from behind the trees. Once they’re settled on the porch step, he makes sure to tug at her arm until she’s snuggled up against his side. He has to because not being close to her feels wrong. Because it’s almost like he gave up his personal space and never bothered to reclaim it since they made love for the first time.

And why should he reclaim it? He’s in love with her. He’s in love with her intellect and her dedication when it comes to helping those in need. He’s in love with the way she curls her back when she’s about to come and the way her whole body goes slack when it’s over. He’s in love with her veracity and her refusal to treat him with kid gloves. Her kindness, her confidence, and her tendency to drool in her sleep.

“You were right, you know”, she says after a while, “About the welcoming party.”

He nudges her shoulder and half-smiles at the memory. Stumbling from one meaningless conversation to the next, he felt on edge and utterly out of place in his slacks and clean white shirt. Some of the female guests kept batting their eyelashes at him whenever their husbands were out of sight, and he cringed with discomfort. After all, he took no pleasure in being ogled at by a bunch of shady housewives.

Much to his chagrin, his woman was busy chatting with some of the other doctors, so he nursed a glass of stale wine and watched his boy plunder the buffet table until Daryl – shamelessly grouchy and about as charming as a pile of rocks – asked him if he wanted to _blow this popsicle stand_ and check out his bike. They spent an hour or two in his garage, tinkering with spare motorcycle parts and bonding over their mutual disdain for social mixers and neighbourly drama.

“It was alright”, he agrees eventually, “ _You_ were something else, though.”

“Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

Her mortified groan tickles his ribs. She threw herself at him as soon as he returned to Aaron’s house, and whispered into his ear, telling him that Carl was going to stay with Duane and Morgan for the rest of the night. She was tipsy, handsy, and draped in a shade of mulberry that stoked his blood flow. Needless to say that he couldn’t wait to take her home then.

In the morning, he all but limped into the bathroom. He remembers the snort that escaped him when he took in his wild hair and the bruises she’d sucked into the side of his neck. Since then, they’ve attended a couple of other parties – mostly birthdays and community dinners – just to playfully ignore each other for hours and then reconcile in bed.

Their compatibility never fails to amaze him. It doesn’t matter who’s on top or who’s in charge: every time he’s alone with her, he’s on a mission to make up for the years he spent loving her from afar. A mission to fulfil his plans and tell her – with his body – that she’s not only his woman, but his soulmate, too. And he knows she feels the same way when she’s with him in the afterglow. When her fingers dance along his spine and when her lips come to rest at his temple.

As a matter of fact, they’re so in tune that he doesn’t know what to do with himself when she has to pull an all-nighter at the infirmary. It usually ends with him tossing and turning and cursing under his breath until she’s back in his arms at dawn, warm and beautiful and his.

The truth is that he wouldn’t have it any other way. The truth is that he needs her more than he probably should, and that he loves being in love with her because it’s easy and different and because it’s never going to stop. Because she and Carl are the only people that matter, and because – 

“You think they’re gonna throw us another one when we tell them the good news?”

Because – _what?_

Her voice is soft and he stares at her. He can see the tears in her eyes as his own vision starts to blur. Suddenly, he feels like someone cut a hole in his head and carved out the part of his brain that translates his thoughts into speech.

“Y-Yeah?”

The question is ludicrous, but he has to know. After all the shit they had to put up with – the storms, fires, and earthquakes, the running and the fighting and the laborious task of shedding their animal instincts in order to become human again – he has to know if this is it. With a tilt of her head, she smiles at him and cups his face.

“Yeah.”

One word and his stomach drops in the most wonderful way. One word and he’s a weeping mess, clinging to her like she’s a lifeline, kissing her over and over again while she laughs and sobs with him.

He can feel the sun on his skin. He can hear the wind and the birds, he can hear his friends and neighbours as they prepare themselves for another regular day. He holds his woman and closes his eyes. She pulls his hand to her belly. He can’t stop crying and he doesn’t want to. For once, he knows exactly what to say.

“Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's it. i hope were able to enjoy this... _thing_ despite its darker moments.
> 
> cheerio.


End file.
